1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a right-angle electrical connector.
2. Related Art
A so-called right-angle electrical connector is known from Patent Document 1, in which the extension direction of terminals with respect to a circuit board and the mating direction with respect to a mating connector form a right angle. The terminal in this Patent Document 1 is such that the direction of extension of a mating part having a contact component that comes into contact with terminals of a mating connector, is at a right angle to the direction of extension of a leg having at its lower end a connection component that is soldered to the circuit board, and the mating part and the leg are linked at an L-shaped bent part, forming an overall right-angle shape. The terminal having this right-angle shape is made as two types of terminals of different overall lengths. The bent part of the terminal with the shorter overall length is located to the inside of the bent part of the terminal with the longer overall length; the mating parts of the two terminals are arranged in parallel, as are the legs; the contact components of the two terminals are located in a front face opening of a housing; and the contact components of the two terminals are located on the lower face of the bottom wall of the housing.
The contact components of the terminals in Patent Document 1 have a pair (upper and lower) of integral elastic contact pieces that sandwich mating contact pins of the mating connector from above and below, and a throat section is formed by protrusions shaped so that local portions of both of the elastic contact pieces move closer together. This throat section is press-fitted so that pre-load rails of the housing push the throat section apart at both side positions in the width direction that is at a right angle to the insertion direction of the mating contact pins (the direction perpendicular to the paper plane in FIGS. 3 and 4 in Patent Document 1), and pre-loading in the direction of squeezing the pre-load rails is produced at the throat section as the reaction force of this. The mating contact pins are inserted into the throat section at the center position in the above-mentioned width direction, that is, between the pre-load rails in the width direction. Because these mating contact pins are larger in the vertical direction than the pre-load rails, the throat section is further widened, and the throat section comes into contact with the mating contact pins under contact pressure higher than the above-mentioned pre-loading.
The above-mentioned throat section is located such that the upper and lower contact points with the pre-load rails are offset to the front and rear, and the upper contact point is closer to the front face opening side than the lower contact point. Therefore, in a state prior to the insertion of the mating contact pins, a spreading force received from the pre-load rails acts as a force couple at the two contact points whose positions are offset in the longitudinal direction, and as a result, a moment that pushes the legs (and, in turn, the contact components) downward acts on the terminals.
With this Patent Document 1, even though the contact components of the two different (longer and shorter) terminals are in somewhat misaligned positions in the vertical direction with respect to the circuit board, the above-mentioned moment causes the contact components of the two different terminals to press on the circuit board, so as to align the positions with respect to the circuit board and avoid a solder connection defect.